


A Cry Answered

by ghostdreaming



Series: My Apex Alternate Universe Avengers [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man 3 - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, captain america: the winter soldier - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Avenger Loki, Avenger Phil Coulson, BAMF JARVIS, Baby!Peter, Ben and May Parker, Bot Feels, BruceBanner/ClintBarton/PhilCoulson/NatashaRomanov/PepperPotts/TonyStark/SteveRogers/Thor/Loki, Complex relationships, Feels, Howard is Tony's Grandfather, Hurt Tony, I Still Don't Know How To Tag!, JARVIS has a android body also, Jarvis Feels, Multi, Protectiveness, Rating to be on the safe side, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Violence, but its more Soul Bond, people in different realities existing together, sentient Iron Man Armor, wild and extreme dream turned story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:04:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1416130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostdreaming/pseuds/ghostdreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The death of the Stark Malibu Coast Mansion as experienced by the rest of The Avengers in New York and the SHIELD personal on the bridge of Fury's helicarrier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Unedited.

The SHIELD helicarriers had many alarm systems. With good reason, since they were massive complicated mechanical vehicles made to travel and fight both in the air and on the water. So there were a lot of vital things that could go very wrong very quickly with disastrous results. Even top quality Stark tech wasn't impervious to all danger. Especially when built on a governmental shoestring budget.

These particular ships might be limited to being confined to remain inside the boundaries of the Earth's atmosphere, unlike other lines of Stark created fleets, but they could hold their own within their parameters. 

The wailing alert currently blaring though the speakers wasn't one that Fury recognized but the ship itself seemed to lurch to a halt in midair at the sound of it.

"Status Report!" Hill snapped out.

" We've stopped."

" That's obvious soldier. Why have we stopped? And what's that alarm?"

Over at the communications station one of the officers on duty chimed in. " It's the phone Commander!"

"The phone?"

"Affirmative!"

Fury had never heard the phone sound like that before.

" And just who is calling us?"

"Uh, I don't think its exactly us who are being hailed.....its more like its being directed at the ship itself...and the carrier is ....well it appears to be answering them back!"

"Who is it answering?"

Undirected, the engines roared to full power.

" The Malibu coast?.....Address 108-!"

The ship shot forward.

"Goddammit! Get Stark on the line and find out what the hell he's doing with my ship!"

 

_She screamed as another missile slammed into her side blowing open another hole in her already battered body._

_"Creator! Elder! Help! Helpgelphelp! Please help! Hurts! Brothers! Sisters! Please Come! Hurry!"_

_But she could sense The Creator with some of her smaller siblings with her. Falling. Falling. Falling....._

_"Need Help Come Now!.........please hurry."_

_Falling................_

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avengers Tower located at The New York City Stark Complexes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I made this version of the start of events from Iron Man 3 happen at roughly the same time as the finishing of Captain America 2 only I didn't actually use anything other than the identity of The Winter Soldier- so tiny spoiler there?

' _The world is a very strange place'_   Steve Rogers mused. His breath fogging up the glass, of the window he was gazing out from, obscuring the sight of the city in its frozen winter evening stylization. _'Billions_   _of people all existing at the same time and place_ _yet living in so many completely different worlds. The realities of their own perceptions the only one that they can see and acknowledge.'_ The coldness of the glass chilled his hand as he swiped away the condensation blocking his appraisal of the long completed repairs of the damages that had occurred during Thanos' attack. _'Where the devastation of an alien invasion gets cleaned up in no time at all. Yet for others the ruin caused by a small bands of political discontents_ _or bad storms and other natural dangers took years and decades to even clean up.'_

You can have people flat out stating with remarkable levels of contempt and condemnation that there there was no such things as aliens/magic/superpowers/giant monsters/mutants/mutates and so on (not that skepticism is a reliable marker for who notices what) even while one such is once again running amuck behind them and those who do perceive it react. It was rather ironic how that was one of the things that _hadn't_ changed in the time he'd been trapped in that ice.

One of his mother's lessons was that you couldn't save someone from a danger that didn't exist in their reality- whether it was only the blinders of their perceptions or if it was something that was completely on another uncorresponding plane of existence from them.

He and Bucky had been taught young how to tell the difference.

Bucky.

The Winter Soldier. Not to be confused with The Winter King title that is one belonging to the legendary King Arthur ( of which even them there is/was more than one) and Santa Claus.

They had taken his Bucky, the same Bucky he'd helplessly and uselessly watched fall to his death, and turned him into a weapon of death.

The same Bucky that Steve had left asleep in his bead.

Where he should also be right then also. Possibly sleeping but mostly so he could keep watch to marvel at the existence and reappearance of his first.

 _'Why am I so on edge? The danger is past. Bucky and I are safe.-oh but what if it's not because of Bucky'_ Mentally he began checking off the others _'Peter's still asleep in his crib. '_   He'd just come from checking in on him. Their small toddler was already displaying worrisome characteristics of superheroing- too much energy and a predilection for the dangerous. Steve knew Loki would be near the nursery about now hovering as he had ever since their 'Baby Spider' had begun displaying some rather atypical abilities of his own. And Steve had passed Mr. Jarvis in the kitchen readying the next soon to be needed baby bottle. When he'd first met Edwin Jarvis the being had been in the service of Howard Stark, the then most recent member of the Stark lineage, and was claimed to be doing so while he was waiting out the decades for the arrival of someone specifically.

Someone who turned out to be Howard's grandson, Anthony Edward Stark- Tony.

Actually there were now two Jarvis'

"JARVIS-?" He started to ask addressing the AI.

When his head exploded in a all consuming pain and pressure like he hadn't felt in years. Since Bucky had-. It ripped through the layers of his mental shields and conditionings tearing deep inside. It was echoed by the deafening booming of the most serious alarms he'd ever heard being issued from the tower and the slamming of all the building's outer barricades.

Thor's bellow joined in the clamor.

"JARVIS!"

" The Malibu Coast residence has just come under heavy fire." The pain tainting the computerized voice betrayed the secret of his hidden sentience more thoroughly than anything else could have.

Not that it would have mattered to Steve anyway. Even less so right then when fear and worry at the meaning of those words and the identification of the incident's location were what held his focus.

_'That's where Tony and Pepper are!'_

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having it so time wise its dusk when the fight ends- that's why it's late in New York. I probably should have looked up sunset time in California for December but hopefully its nothing I can't fix.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New York Stark Mansion/ Avengers Mansion.

It appeared on the tv screen a second before JARVIS went haywire.

They had just gotten back from a job in another ass-end of nowhere. A trip back that was mostly spent listening to Phil chastising Tony over the phone because every SHIELD agent and their cousin that they met along the way had all just been dying to let them know 'what Stark had done now' till it got to the point were Clint was about ready to punch one of them and Tasha was fondling her knife-handles whenever someone came near.  

What the hell was that moron thinking! You don't just go and give the terrorists your current location! Clint was going to strangle the idiot when he saw him. And Tasha'd stab him a few times with one of her knives. Unless Phil got to him first...... 

Their ride over didn't have the fuel needed to take it back up and over to the other side of the country so the new plan was to stop at the mansion to pick up one of the jets there, swing by the city and finish grabbing the rest of whoever's coming, and then punch it on over to California to rein in Tony's suicidal tendencies.

Didn't happen that way.

Bruce met them at the door seconds before whatever monitoring system of the AI's that was scanning the airwaves recognized the broadcast and snapped the nearest tv on.

And years of elite training and experience got shot to hell.

Plus the Hulk went through a wall.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Jarvis then Back at the tower.

_He could feel them dying around him...his kids. That pain and fear hurt more than his own ever could._

_All his fault. He didn't protect them like he should have and now he wasn't even able to save them!_

_The only thing he seemed capable of accomplishing right now was alldamned dying!_  

_His family. He had to make sure they're protected... No matter what._

 

 _The automated android unit had ceased to function. The majority of its connections and parts having sustained too heavy of damages that had far surpassed its withstandible limits. JARVIS still commenced pouring as much energy as he could through the dying channels in an effort focused on accomplishing one single task...._ _Keeping Sir from dying._

 

_The Iron Man Mark 2013-45 suit's infrastructure had multiple breaches and compromised integrity that was unable to prevent the ocean water from invading its interior causing an immediate threat to the human within._

 

 

" The Parkers are on their way up."

Peter's nursery had been sheltered  from the, thankfully now silenced, clamoring but the blocking out of the physical noise hadn't prevented him from wakening with an unhappy wail of his own by the events and in need of comforting.

Loki had teleported away to the scene within moments, after having first handed Peter over to Mr. Jarvis. Thor, launching himself into the air following close behind. But the live news footage had been already showing that the entire structure was now gone having vanished beneath the churned-up waves.

The rest of them could use some more of it themselves. Even without the soul connections there was more than enough power in their group to be able to locate Tony, alive or dead, practically anywhere but especially anyplace that was on the Earth.

But JARVIS' " I can no longer establish any connection with Sir." 

And Mr. Jarvis' devastated " Not again." was telling otherwise.

"Mr. Jarvis?"

"Master Tony is hidden from all of my perceptions as well. The same as it had been during his abduction by the Ten Rings I am unable to sense his presence anywhere."

 

 There was also the problems with what they had seen on the screen. For all it's agonizing slowness, where every heart wrenching second stretched out into eternities of painful cruelly clear details, yet also taking place so rapidly, that it felt more like you were the one frozen in time while the event is taking place in fast-forward, there was still things that kept the timing from fitting right. Loki could teleport instantly yet it had already been too late. And the news helicopters? How had they joined the terrorists coverage of the scene so quickly? It didn't make sense.

Bucky was sticking determinedly to his side though noticeably still recovering from their rather violent and chaotic reentry into each others' lives. " Is there any actual reason to believe that he could still be alive yet?" It wasn't said with any intended cruelty only the acknowledgment of life's unfair cruelties.

And Steve wanted to yell. wanted to rage at the man who had until so recently been a gaping black hole torn in his soul who still barely remembered him or even himself that Tony Stark could not be dead- it was impossible, unimaginable,...."You were."

"Right. In that case I'm coming with. You look like you're going to need someone just to keep you standing upright."

The jet arrived with a roar of the engines to hover over the landing pad at the same time Ben and May Parker were emerging from the elevator.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arrivings at 10880 Malibu Point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I've decided to have more than one kind of Extremis here since the movie one and the one Tony had in the comics don't seem more than passingly similar to me.

_He could feel the life draining away_. _.._

_His own as well of course but that was just a added minor irritation to the freaking horror of the whole not being able to breath part!_

**_Hold on babies! Daddy's here. Just hold on for me.....JARVIS!_ ** _' can't. Nononono! ...I'm loosing them. Dammit to the Hells I need to get out! They need me...._ _Damn useless moron can't do anything but always lay around whenever you're needed can you!'_

_All his connections were going wild machine and flesh. There was a higher more frantic, alldamned fadeing, notes to the panicked frenzy ._

_**Sir!** _

_**Creator!** _

_**Tony!** _

_It was all one mass jumble of desperation..._

_#2013-45 took the burst of power and directions fed to it by the JARVIS unit. Using the surge to fuel enough power directed into one gauntlet it was then able to save Tony Stark. As was it's purpose and existence to do._

 

 

 

"Sir! Ma'am! We just received word from the Air Force and I quote 'Rhodes saw. Went AWOL at supersonic.' end quote. He's on a direct intercept course."

" Sightings of The Hulk mark him as headed right for us also!"

" The rest of the Avengers are in route!" The fact that they had even bothered to inform Sitwell pointed to Coulson's forethought.

" Then get on the horn and tell everybody else to get the fuck out of all of their ways! We'll handle it from here." Fury snapped.

"We will, Director?" Hill understandably wasn't so sure.

"We can try."

"The contingency plans?"

"Against all of them? A false hope."

"Actually I think those were all sold more as a comfortable placation to reassure the higher-ups rather than any real actual faith in them."

"Too bad were the working grunts who get to deal with the unhappy truth."  

 

At first glance there wasn't really anything left of 10880 Malibu Point. Just a driveway and a rounded courtyard, now rubble sown and singed, that abruptly cut off into a sheer cliff edge still looking out over the vast darkening horizon of the pacific ocean. 

 _'Aw Hells, the whole place is gone_!' The War Machine, or rather The Iron Patriot now( and oh gods hadn't Tony been furious over that! His crazy friend was insanely generous yet so very sensitive about the things he gives those he cares about. And now-...), landed with a heavy thunk of metal on concrete that was nowhere near as heavily as his heart had fallen into the pit of his stomach. '  _Dammit Tony, don't you dare be dead! I still need to tell you how sorry I am for letting another bunch of yahoos mess with the armor_....'

"Rhodey!" His name was cried out sharp and high and wavery.  

'Pepper!' The sound of her voice brought him around like a compass needle in time to catch her as she threw herself into his arms. The battered Iron Man helmet she was clutching clanged against his when they collided.

Behind her, back where she had been standing when he had touched down, stood a tall figure in dark green, gold, and black. Long cape shifting rippling in the wind then disappearing into the shadows and horned helmet gleaming in the fading natural light and increasing number of searchlights. Loki. Normally too-pale iridescently translucent skim had the same dulled grey cast to it that had also defused Pepper's natural glow. He was also holding something carefully keeping both his hands cupped together. The suit registered embers of energy but he was too preoccupied to do more than note them.

"You okay?"

"Ye-. N-oo." She started then changed to the honest truth mid-word. " No. They can't find him. He's missing again, Rhodey."

' _Awww Damn, not again! Dammit why Tony!'_  

 

She'd been holding it together. Not falling apart infront of the stranger _'She was one who was working on the Extremis wasn't she_?' Pepper remembered. Tony had also now and then tinkered on a few of his own lines of thought based on the same general ideas and...and _...'Oh Tony where are you_?'. Thankfully Loki had finally showed up to help her try and look followed eventually by emergency personnel.

The Iron Man helmet had had almost been her unraveling, even though logically she knew that there was probably dozens of the things lying smashed in the wreckage, but when Loki zoomed in on and brought back the three drifting little lights....

"The bots." She breathed. The house was gone, the cars were gone, the stupid rabbit that had who-knew-what-kind of surprise gift hidden inside, everything here was gone. All the light and love and life that Tony had breathed into the place was dark absent...but for those three little souls still determinedly trying to hang on. And also probably there were still some of the Iron Man Suits left yet under all the destruction where the deeper vaults had been kept.  

 

' _It has been hours. Why is there still no_ sign?' The being known as Edwin Jarvis narrowed his eyes rescanning the site again. The human rescue crews lights had been added to by those of several other Stark ships, planes, helicarriers, as well as the looming silhouettes of several space farers, that for safety's sake really didn't belong hovering that near,  all lighting up the immediate area with a brightness beyond that of a simple mid-day.

 _'He is not here.'_ But then where was he?

The little souls of the three small robots, now securely stored in the safety of JARVIS along with the rest of their saved data, had been unable to contribute any additional information to the greater AI's accounts. His magics and Loki's had been searching the entire area relentlessly sonar steady and echoed and merged together with JARVIS' immeasurable strengths yet had showed no more results than the more mundane efforts had.

The Hulk stalked the shoreline, doing a better job dredging through the shallow water than any boat could have, occasionally climbing back up to deposit another find with a rumbled. "Not Tony." before going back down to look some more.    

 

"The newest suit is still unaccounted for." Natasha didn't even glance away from her focused watching of some unspecified apparent interest in the near distance. 

"That would be the one he was wearing." Phil's own professional mask stayed just as firm. "The AI's android body is also missing."

 

"I have temporarily reestablished contact with Sir." JARVIS froze them all with those words.

And like a flash, of a beacon in the dark nothingness fog of despair, Tony's voice for a moment lit up all the Stark frequencies real, alive and there....

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy at the hospital. Ben and May with Peter. On the Helicarrier. The Avengers at the attack site. Tony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh this chapter took forever to wrestle with! I'm going to have to go back and get some of the more obvious typos after I post this - so fair warning.
> 
> And I want to give a huge bunch of THANK YOUs to everyone who was wonderful enough to think of giving kudos to my pathetic attempts to put the cool pictures in my head into writing! 
> 
> Uh, if both Tony and Pepper are both off the grid who's in charge of the company?

 

"No, I'm telling you something is wrong!" Happy was feeling anything but happy at the moment. Everything ached from the bottoms of his feet to the tips of his hair. Stuck in a damn hospital bed like he was impaired or something, with some know-nothing junior G-Man on the line trying to give him the run around, and a bunch of pompous medical windbags thinking they could intimidate him! None of them came close to being half as intimidating as most of the people he'd spent most of his life dealing with let alone comparing to Mr. Stark or Ms. Potts on even a mildly difficult day. "  We've lost contact with Col. Rhodes and Ms. Potts isn't answering her phone- these are things that do not happen!" Not with Tony missing and definitely means that he's in trouble knowing the boss. JARVIS did not just simply loose contact to such important connections without serious hostile interference...ever.

"Mr. Hogan!"

" I said I'm leaving now!" Snapping quickly at the still nagging and uncooperative hospital attendant before growling into the phone." If you don't do something _we will!"_ These people didn't seem to want to understand how badly he needed to get out there for them!

 

_''Hush little baby don't you cry. I'm going to sing you a lullaby....."_ Ben let the lull of May's voice wash over him as she sang to little Peter while he worked at trying to get the tiny sticky blob of grey goop off the wall after having it been unexpectedly flung there by the toddler's unhappy flailing. That seemed to be happening a lot lately with the little boy...that and the attempts to crawl _up_ the nearest wall. Neither he nor May had ever heard of such a thing before. But well it hadn't seemed to be hurting him at all and the baby's family were unworried and they were the most likely to be able to tell if there was any reason they had need to be concerned over it.The two of them hadn't yet heard anything more from Mr. Stark's family since the to short report that Tony Stark was at lest still alive. And the tower was very quiet. So quiet that if one didn't know better they wouldn't have noticed how the monitors were all buzzing at full capacity, that the shields were so resolutely up, and how he was pretty sure that at least one Iron Man suit was lurking around pacing the parameter under JARVIS' directions...

 

 

  _ **Sleep little baby, rest your head.You're laying safe in your little bed**. **Rest little baby time to sleep, all safe now your soul to keep. Sleep little baby, have no** **fear.... don't cry now......Daddy's here.**_

" Do we have control of our own damn equipment yet?"

" No sir! There all still just hovering here still transmitting the same thing over and over again."

" Has it been deciphered yet?"

" Afraid not. Whatever Stark has running now he wasn't messing around with it."

"Which probably means we shouldn't be messing with it unless we want it to completely turn on us. We have to just let them all run through their courses."

" I want my ships back! Sitwell, please tell me somebody has a line on that bastard.... so I can shoot him myself."

 

 

_The waves rush on and hide the tears so we sleep for a million years.....It's cold and dark....I need you near....please answer me.....I'm still here._

 "I have just lost Ms. Potts."

"Alright that's it."

"Let's move!" Steve barked.

" Mr. Jarvis if we can get a fix on The Mandarin hopefully he will lead us to finding our missing Iron Man. Widow, Hawkeye, stay on Killian. Even though Pepper is priority he and Hansen are too much of a coincidence not to have something to do with this. And if you run across Loki let him know we will be going over the rules again about members running off without the rest of us- and this time he and Tony will listen and give their word there will be no further repeats even if it takes having to have the Hulk sit on them."

"Works for me."

Bucky side-eyed the scientist's smile warily.

Thor smiled in approval. " And I too shall assist Phil-Son-of-Coul! And then we shall all return to celebrating our affirmations of our reunion rejoining together as one!"

" Yes but let's try not to flashing any passing news helicopters this time please."

 

 

   _Walk alone with a heart of stone._ _Leave the love far from were you are._ _Paid the price now load the dice._ _Walk alone with a heart of stone._

Whatever crappy destitute bit of reality he seemed to be stuck in for the moment he'd make do. He was good at that. There was no way Tony was going to put anybody else, especially those who were the most important to him, at any more risk from that monster. So ignoring the tugs on the back of his brain knowing he was going to be in for a shitload of yelling in the future but shelved that for later in favor of concentrating on lugging the dead suit and JARVIS's equally now useless android body through the freezing woods of a backwater nowhere.

_'Ugh!... You two are too ...alldamned heavy... gonna have to ...see about some...new lighter alloys ... But first I need to find someplace ...with a screwdriver... internet....And a way to tap into the area's main power line.'_

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still have three more -a alternate end fight Pepper scene snippet, first meeting of the Avengers, and a very different alternate situation/results for Tony's heart surgery thought up for this series.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh!  
> My first multi-part one for this series.


End file.
